Britney Spears in Los Angeles in April 2017.Photo:Image Group LA/Disney Channel via Getty
Image Group LA/Disney Channel via Getty
Britney Spearsis reflecting on the painful years she spentunder a conservatorshipand the ways in which she says the court order stripped her of her humanity.
In an excerpt fromher long-awaited memoirThe Woman in Meshared exclusively with PEOPLE in this week’s cover story, Spears, 41, writes that for more than a decade, she felt as though she’d been handed an unfair card in life.
Britney Spears on the cover of PEOPLE.Britney Brands
Britney Brands
The “Hold Me Closer” singer was placed under the conservatorship in 2008 following a public breakdown. Her father Jamie Spearswas removed as conservator of her estatein September 2021, andthe conservatorship was terminated two months later.
Spears' time under her father’s control has continued to face scrutiny, as she has claimed it was a traumatic period, while Jamie maintains that he was acting in his daughter’s best interest.
InThe Woman in Me, Spears says shewas “robbed” of her freedomduring that time, and often found herself stuck between adulthood and adolescence, with the conservatorship stripping her “of [her] womanhood” and making her “into a child.”
“There was no way to behave like an adult, since they wouldn’t treat me like an adult, so I would regress and act like a little girl; but then my adult self would step back in - only my world didn’t allow me to be an adult,” she writes. “The woman in me was pushed down for a long time. They wanted me to be wild onstage, the way they told me to be, and to be a robot the rest of the time. I felt like I was being deprived of those good secrets of life — those fundamental supposed sins of indulgence and adventure that make us human. They wanted to take away that specialness and keep everything as rote as possible. It was death to my creativity as an artist.”
Britney Spears for PEOPLE.Britney Brands
The singer writes that whilethe glare of growing up in the public eye was difficult, she had previously found ways to push back, like the time she shaved her head in 2007. But under the conservatorship, “I was made to understand that those days were now over.”
Under the conservatorship, She lost her creative spark, with her passion for singing and dancing becoming “almost a joke,” she writes.
“I became more of an entity than a person onstage. I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me,” she writes. “If they’d let me live my life, I know I would’ve followed my heart and come out of this the right way and worked it out.”
Britney Spears performs in Las Vegas in June 2016.Marco Piraccini\Archivio Marco Piraccini\Mondadori via Getty
Marco Piraccini\Archivio Marco Piraccini\Mondadori via Getty
Inan interview with PEOPLE done over email, Spears dives deeper into the most difficult moments of her life, admitting that she still finds them “hard to speak about.”
With the conservatorship in her rearview, Spears has moved on and writes in her book that she’s since “had to construct a whole different identity.”
“I’ve had to say, Wait a second, this is who I was — someone passive and pleasing. A girl. And this is who I am now—someone strong and confident. A woman,” she writes.
Britney Spears' The Woman in Me.
Spears will releaseThe Woman in Meon Oct. 24 through Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. It is now availablefor pre-order.
For more of the exclusive excerpt and interview with Britney Spears, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.
source: people.com
